I’m ready to take down the barrier.

I have created a small cave beside the top barrier and gathered there my evolved crabs, fishes and bats. I even raised their numbers.

The plan is to break send a bunch of mana in the barrier through the side, immediately claim the area and dig a passageway with air and water for when it'll collapse. After that my creatures will rush inside and be ready to kill any creatures on the other side.

I’m also ready to make a retreat if necessary. In that case, I would call back my creatures and close the path behind them, retreating my presence from the direct vicinity of the barrier.

I’m starting. I gather a big amount of mana in the air in front of the barrier. The mana is forming a luminous ball floating in the air, whenever a bug fly through it fries with a ‘puf’, my other creatures can’t see the ball, but they’re feeling its presence, the bugs are just too stupid to stay away. I focus on the shade of the ball, making it a cone, this form should be better to focus the strength of the attack on one point and penetrate more easily the barrier.

I’m feeling a bit stressed, it’s the first time I’m going to attack something that is not a simple creature.

I feel ready, the mana cone charge, I used almost all of my mana to make it, keeping just enough for the rest of the operation, and the cone is just as big as a bat. I launch the attack. The mana construct move in the small cave and my creatures are tensed in anticipation. The cone impacts the barrier without any sound, but I can feel some strange vibration flowing through the barrier. I push the cone stronger and stronger on it, feeling the cone’s point slowly fading away.

The barrier shaking more and more on the whole surface. It’s vibrating so much I start to think it’s going to explode. The shaking’s turning into a real quake, but it’s only on a mana level. The earth, air, and water are completely still. It’s kind of a strange feeling, having mana in such a tremor but everything else perfectly calm.

Then I sense the tip of the core finally piercing through the barrier. I push it more and the barrier shatters. The cone keeps going in the rock but quickly infused itself in the crock, claiming it for me. I don’t lose a second and start to claim the whole area as I dig a tunnel for my creatures to go through, 3 fast fishes that were waiting in the 3 original waterway also rush up to see what’s in there.

The 3 fast fishes are the first to arrive and they immediately turn back, to report what they saw. Light, there is light in there, when all the other waterway in the mountain as darker than the night. And there is no living creature. By the time I get that information from those fishes, I myself finish claiming the area, in the following second the tunnel is finished and my creatures burst out of it.

It’s a rather small and perfectly elliptical room. In the middle of it stands a blue rock and some black shards. The rock is embedded in a pedestal and there is a real torrent of water flowing out of it and filling a small pool beneath it. The water is flowing out of the rock as if the rock’s creating the water out of nowhere.

There is no apparent danger, but it doesn't mean there is no danger at all. I claim the entire place and the only thing that is still resisting my claiming powers is the blue rock.

Now that I can inspect it closer, it’s more like a crystal. A dimly glowing blue crystal emitting water tasting mana and creating water. I’ve never heard of such thing, not that I’ve really heard of anything anyway.

I pour mana into the water crystal for claiming it, but it’s soaking it. Every drop of mana I’m giving the crystal seems to make it glow a bit brighter, and the flow of water grows a bit too. The light it’s emitting must reflect the quantity of mana it has in reserve and the more mana it has in it, the more water it can create. I want to claim this rock, but I can’t for now, so I focus myself on the shards instead.

The black shards are also crystals, but there is no mana in it, I claim them with even more ease than I claim air. The shards look like they were forming another crystal put aside the water crystal. If the water crystal is creating water, this crystal was probably the one responsible for the barrier. It’s a safe bet to assume there is another one inside the bottom barrier.

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I slowly move the black shards together to reform the original crystal, then I pour mana in it to fuse the shards together and I keep putting my mana in the black crystal in an attempt to reactivate it. Now that I claimed the crystal I suppose the barrier will not block me. But it fails, all the mana I’m putting in the stone stay in there, I can take it back but it doesn’t make a thing. It’s useless now.

Wait a sec’. It’s not useless. I can store mana in it, and take it back as soon as I want. It’s like a secondary mana pool. A little supplementary mana pool. I could make it bigger or create some other crystals like this and increase my capacity to store mana in tremendous quantity. That’s a good news, but I currently don't have enough mana to do it. I also want to claim the water one before.

I release the creatures and standby in the top cavity and pour all my remaining mana into the water crystal. I’m not going to move it, I still need it to create water from where it is.

It took me three days to claim the water crystal.

During that time I discover some new plants thanks to my big bats and that on the sea side of the mountain there are other birds called ‘seagull’. I also manage to claim some lizards and a sparrow. Thanks to the sparrow and is daytime activities, I learned the that the forest is bigger than I thought and that I’m on an island. It means that when I managed to claim the whole island I’ll have to find something else to aim at, I could go back to search for a way to claim back my memories.

The sparrow also informed me that there is a whole village of hikers. It’s on the south side of the island, almost on the other side of it. I’ll come back to it at another time.

Like I said, I’ve managed to claim the water crystal. It took me a phenomenal amount of mana to do it but I succeeded. Now I can manage the flow of the water the crystal is creating and flowing in the mountain. I also discovered that it can absorb enough mana from the area to sustain a permanent flow of water, although if it was relying only on this it wouldn’t be able to produce a sufficient amount of water to irrigate the area. This water crystal can also serve as mana reserve, but I think I will no use take back the mana I store in it, except in an emergency, I will simply make sure it has sufficient mana to produce the quantity of water I want at all the time.

Now that the matter of the top barrier is settled, I turn my focus to the lower one.

This second barrier is encompassing a bigger area than the first. The water flowing inside it from the upper side of the mountain is flowing outside on the other side of the barrier and further underneath the earth, in the direction of the island’s center.

There is also the remains of a collapsed tunnel coming from inside the island and entering the barrier. I’m curious about what I will find inside this barrier.

I prepare the same strategy for this barrier than I used for the first. I don’t see the interest to change tactic, It’s a bit mana consuming, but I have plenty of time to gather the mana.

My bats are waiting in the previously collapsed tunnel that I rebuild, my crabs are walking on the surface of the barrier in the waterway and my fishes are waiting beside them.

I launch the new cone on the barrier and there is the same reaction that previously. Although this barrier is much more resilient, the cone falters and dissipates before breaking the barrier. I don’t have enough mana to do another cone right now, so I put the next attack in hold, waiting for my mana to regenerates.

When I launch the second attack the barrier shakes even stronger than the first, then it shatters in the same way.

My fishes swim down the waterway and my crabs think behind them while I’m claiming the now free area and digging through the collapsed part of the tunnel for my bats.

When I finish claiming the area I found a new shattered crystal, but it’s not all. The room is the biggest I found on the mountain, and it was clearly made by someone. There are some columns on the side of the room and a pond at the end of the room. In the middle of the pond stands a big statue of a bipedal creature that holds the shattered crystal in its hands. The statue represents a female of a species I do not know. It has a visage with fine lines and two closed eyes. The statue is clearly representing a wise and motherly figure. I have absolutely no idea of the purpose of such a thing, maybe it’s for impressing some sapient creatures.

I think I will find out the true use of this place when I manage to get information out of the hikers. For now, I’ll simply let it like that as a private piece of art.

Before going back to my other plans I put the shattered crystal back together and find out it’s the same as the one I found in the upper barrier, just bigger. I can store more mana in this one, but I can’t make it activate the barrier. I must miss something, or I destroyed this function while breaking through the barrier.